Gas turbine engine internal fuel manifolds are typically located inside the gas generator case adjacent the engine combustor, and thus reside in an extremely hot environment. As is typical with other hardware mounted inside a gas turbine engine, the internal fuel manifold must generally be mounted such as to allow for thermal expansion of the manifold and accommodate mismatches in thermal expansion which may exist between components made of different materials.
The mounting system for an internal fuel manifold may be a factor which effects engine durability, as failure of this system can cause fuel to spray onto the combustor liner, causing combustor and hot end durability issues. One solution to generally increase the durability of the mounting system includes providing additional support points between the internal fuel manifold and the gas generator case. However such a solution usually requires relaxation of the tolerances of the support points to allow for assembly, thus undesirably reducing the precision of the location of the fuel manifold within the gas generator case.
Accordingly, improvements are desirable.